You may have a point. Like I believe happens with conjestion charging in cities, the initial impact of the localised cost is to cause a decrease in volumes. However, over time, people adjust their budgets, so volumes adjust back to where they were prior to the charge being introduced.

However, there are three major problems.
1. The incentives have their limits Building a competing road might make good sense but the existing road operator would have an entrenched interest in blocking such a scheme. What is more, new competition would cause an existing operator to lower prices. So a road like the M6 Toll might never have been built in a competitive environment, as it relied on being able to raise tolls over time. One might get less new roads as a result, not more.
2. Politics get in the way – most schemes get evolved, there are compromises made. As private companies would need to be incentivised, it could either mean huge profits for the operators (with a net welfare loss to society), or such onerous conditions that there would be insufficient bids for the franchises to mop up much of the national debt. A big bang approach (that is implied here) would probably lead to too much profit.
3. The alternative – the piecemeal appraoch over time, would lead to a slow impact on the national debt. Also a phases approach would have the VED and the tolls running concurrently. As the onus will be on maximising revenue over the next few years, you could end up with both road tolls and car tax.

I can’t imagine any sane companies paying £110 billion for rights to maintain our roads, even if they were guaranteed a profit. Any company daft enough to take on overall responsibility for our main roads would probably be sued for accidents, closures and failure to repair potholes promptly.

The next Conservative government will need all the friends it can get, without making enemies of 33 million drivers, most of whom have votes. Although they have soaked up being treated as a cash cow for years, they are becoming increasingly militant and well-organised.

If a future government needs to trim spending, it should look first at reducing the vast state advertising bill and the money wasted in trying to stop naturally-occurring climate change?

Reply: I have gone hoarse talking about reducing waste and needless public spending. We need to do that as well.I am dead against government tolling and surveillance of our highways. I have in mind the kind of smart pre payment card and drive through toll system they have on US roads. They only need log the ones without the prepayment card. Why don’t you want to get the government out of our pockets as motorists, by abolishing the poll tax on cars and giving us better roads?

I have my own doubts about whether the planning process did come to the best final decision, but having come to a decision let’s carry it out. It takes us so long to make a decision we shouldn’t then spend time undoing it later. That way we would get even less done, and spend even more.

Day trippers to coastal towns clog up the roads and although they create revenue of a sort, there is still the clear up and cost to the infrastructure that is becoming increasingly difficult!